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Ten worst plane crashes in the world

A Russian Tupolev-134 passenger jet crashed late on Monday night killing forty four people. Here is a list of the ten worst plane crashes in history around the world.

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© AFP/GETTYRussian rescuers inspect the wreckage of the Polish government Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft which crashed near Smolensk airport
1. 1977: 583 people died after two Boeing 747s (KLM and Pan Am) collided on a runway in Tenerife in the worst accident in the history of commercial aviation.

2. 1985: 520 people perished after a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure and slewed into Mount Osutaka. To date, it is the worst single-aircraft disaster in history.

3. 1996: 349 people died after a mid-air collision in India between a Boeing 747 operated by Saudi Arabian Airlines and a Soviet-era Ilyushin-76 plane operated by Air Kazahkstan.

Ambulance

Russian Officials Say 44 Dead in North-Western Plane Crash

A RusAir plane crashed in northwestern Russia in heavy fog overnight, killing 44 people. Officials said some of the eight survivors were in critical condition.

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Symbolic or Intentional? Two top atomic energy engineers and at least three senior managers of Russian leading nuclear reactors' construction firm were killed in a fatal plane crash

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© Reuters/Nika TV via Reuters TVPeople walk at the site of a plane crash about 1 km (0.6 miles) from the runway at the airport outside the northern Russian city of Petrozavodsk in this still image taken from video footage June 21, 2011.
Forty-four people died and a handful of survivors were fighting for their lives after an overnight airliner crash in north-western Russia, the Civil Defence Ministry reported Tuesday.

The Russair charter flight from Moscow crashed about midnight (2000 GMT Monday) as it approached its destination, Petrozavodsk, 400 kilometres north-east of St Petersburg in Russia's Republic of Karelia, which borders Finland.

The Tupolev Tu-134, with 43 passengers and a crew of nine, made a hard landing on a highway about a kilometre from the airport at Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, according to news reports.

A possible failure of communications between the air crew and ground controllers and thick fog could have been contributing factors, airline officials told the Interfax news agency.

Pistol

US: Inside Nightmare Shop Slaughter

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Surveillance photos released yesterday show the suspect enter the store, and leave a mass murderer.
Pharmacy video captures every step of psycho's execution spree

They didn't put up fight -- and he still slaughtered them.

Chilling surveillance video at the tiny Haven Pharmacy in Medford, LI, captured the horrific Father's Day bloodbath that left four dead -- and law-enforcement sources yesterday described how the killer "executed" his innocent victims without making any demands.

"This is one of the most heinous, brutal crimes we have ever encountered," said stunned Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer yesterday.

All four victims "offered no resistance -- and did not appear to provoke the shooter in any way," Dormer said.


Arrow Down

Canada: Concrete Chunk Falls from Gardiner

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© Dwight Friesen/CBCA portion of Lakeshore Ave. West was closed after a 4.5-kilogram chunk of concrete from the Gardiner Expressway crashed to the road below.
A portion of a busy downtown road was closed for about two hours Monday after a large chunk of concrete crashed to the ground.

The 4.5-kilogram chunk from the Gardiner Expressway fell onto a guardrail on Lakeshore Boulevard West just before 1 p.m., scattering debris on the road east of Bathurst Street near Dan Leckie Way.

Police closed two westbound lanes of traffic while crews cleaned up the area. It re-opened before 3 p.m.

There were no reports of injuries.

Toronto Works Committee chair Denzil Minnan-Wong said city crews would be sent to the site on Tuesday to determine if there was any structural damage.

Dollar

Get Ready for More Plastic in Your Wallet; Canada Switching to Polymer Bills

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© The Canadian Press / Sean KilpatrickBank of Canada Governor Mark Carney holds a new $100 bill as he unveils the new polymer bank notes in $50 and $100 denominations at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa on Monday, June 20, 2011.
Get ready to have a little more plastic in your wallet.

Starting in November, new polymer bank notes will start to replace paper-cotton bills that wear and tear more easily.

The first bills to go plastic will be the $100 notes. The $50 notes will follow next March. The rest of the plastic money will be in circulation by the end of 2013.

The polymer bank notes are more durable than paper money. The Bank of Canada expects the new bills to last 2.5 times longer than the paper ones.

They're also harder to fake than paper money. Some of the security features built into the new notes include raised ink, hidden numbers and metallic images in see-through windows.

Wall Street

Airbus' superjumbo jet clips building at air show

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© Unknown
The European airplane maker Airbus was left red in the face this weekend, when on on-ground accident forced it to withdraw an A380 superjumbo from the Paris Air Show.

The enormous plane--with a wingspan of 80 yards--scraped a building at the show, clipping its wing. Korean Air flew one of its superjumbo jets to the show to come to Airbus' rescue, The Wall Street Journal reported. The damaged plane sat with its wing covered over the weekend.

The mishap wasn't the only embarrassment for Airbus at the biennial air show. The company also had to pull a military transport carrier A400M from a flight demonstration after problems were found in its gear box, the Journal reports. Airbus officials then brought in another aircraft to do a flyover pass to impress visiting foreign dignitaries who attended the show.

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© Reuters
Meanwhile, rival Boeing's distinctive 747-8 superjumbo upstaged Airbus. The company said it had received $5.4 billion in orders for the new aircraft.

Newspaper

44 killed in Russian passenger jet crash

The plane broke up on a highway short of the airport

Moscow - A passenger jet crashed in heavy fog and burst into flames late Monday on a highway in northwestern Russia, just short of a runway whose high-intensity lights had failed, killing 44 people, officials said. Eight people survived the crash.

The Tu-134 plane, belonging to the RusAir airline, was en route from Moscow to the city of Petrozavodsk, an Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman, Oksana Semyonova, told The Associated Press.

Her ministry said in a website statement that 44 people were killed. Eight survivors, including a 10-year-old boy and a female flight attendant, were hospitalized in critical condition in Petrozavodsk.

Semyonova said the plane went down on its final approach to the airport in Petrozavodsk, making a crash landing about a mile short of the runway, breaking apart and then bursting into flames. It was unclear if the plane had attempted to land on the road, or just happened to fall there, she said. Petrozavodsk is in Karelia province, near the Finnish border, about 400 miles northwest of Moscow.

Arrow Down

US: City Flushes 8M Gallons After Man Caught Urinating in Reservoir

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© unknown
Because a 21-year-old man was caught on a security camera urinating into a city reservoir, Oregon's biggest city is sending 8 million gallons of treated drinking water down the drain.

Portland officials defended the decision Monday, saying they didn't want to send city residents water laced, however infinitesimally, with urine.

Public health officials say, however, that urine is sterile in healthy people and that the urine in the reservoir was so diluted - perhaps a half pint in millions of gallons - that it posed little risk.

Some people in the city, in the suburbs and around the world called the flush an overreaction, especially since animals such as ducks contribute waste routinely and, sometimes, die in the water.

Bad Guys

Brazilian Soldiers and Police Raid Slums Overrun by Drug Trafficking Gangs as they Clear the Way for 2014 Football World Cup

Hundreds of Brazilian soldiers and police officers have swooped on a crime-ridden slum this morning as part of an operation to rid Rio De Janeiro of gangs ahead of the 2014 World Cup.

A group of marines, backed by helicopters and armoured vehicles, were joined by around 800 armed police and other officers during the raid in the Mangueria neighbourhood, one of Rio de Janeiro's most populous neighborhoods.

The shantytown is a key part of the city as the Maracana stadium located nearby will host both the 2014 World Cup final and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2016 Olympic Games.

The operation is an attempt to drive from the area the drug traffickers that have held sway there for decades, Brazilian officials said.

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© ReutersSwoop on the slums: Policemen prepare for the operation against drug dealers at Mangueira favela

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© ReutersBulldozing their way in: Brazilian Navy soldiers in an armoured vehicle prepare to take over the heavily populated neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro

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© ReutersForcing their way in: Policeman and Brazilian Navy soldiers met little resistance as they charged into the shantytown